Inventing Times Square: Commerce and Culture at the Crossroads of the World

Description

A unique volume, Inventing Times Square approaches the subject of twentieth-century American city culture through a multidimensional examination of one quintessential urban space: Times Square. Ranging in time from 1905, when the crossroad was given its present name, through to the current plans for redevelopment, the authors examine Times Square as economic hub, real estate bonanza, entertainment center, advertising medium, architectural experiment, and erotic netherworld. Though the volume centers on Times Square, the essays venture much further into urban history and American social history, revealing in the process how Times Square reflected-even epitomized-America as it became an urban consumer culture.

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About Author

William Taylor has taught at Harvard University, the University of Wisconsin, the University of Chicago, and the State University of New York-Stony Brook. A fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities, he is the author of In Pursuit of Gotham and Cavalier and Yankee.